Film Pairing — On Everyone’s Top Ten List

Why not spend an evening – a long one at that – with two movies on just about everyone’s Top Ten List? Certainly they occupy that status among crime movies. Both films were released in the 1970s. Both were critically acclaimed and represent  two of the world’s most famous directors’ work at the top of their games.

Chinatown — Put this classic in the categories of P.I. films and film noir. A fresh-faced Jack Nicholson plays an L.A. private investigator who finds himself in in the midst of an embarrassing family sexual abuse scandal and inadvertently drawn into a battle about water in a desert in 1937. When only recently the CEO of Nestle, whose products line most of the shelves of your local supermarket, claimed water is not a human right, Chinatown proves itself a timeless reflection of the eternal struggle of greed on behalf of the powerful few versus survival of the rest. John Huston represents the ugliness of pure greed — determined to get whatever he wants at whatever the cost. Directed by Roman Polanski and released in 1974, this film also featured Faye Dunaway, James Hong and Diane Ladd. Robert Towne wrote the screenplay.

The Godfather — As I watched it for the umpteenth time I was again reminded of how much the film seemed to be a series of moving oil paintings, rather than mere moving pictures.  John A. Alonzo is credited with the astounding cinematography. He is probably the least known of the masters working together on this film.  Based on Mario Puzo’s blockbuster novel, master director Francis Ford Coppola created a film judged by the U.S. National Film Registry as one of the greatest American films of all time, exceeded only by Citizen Cane. Marlon Brando is the godfather. Al Pacino is the favored son. Both are riveting. The entire cast is stellar: James Caan, Sterling Hayden, Robert Duvall, Diane Keaton, Richard Conte, and Abe Vigoda.  Keep your eye out for other surprises, Al Martino and Morgana King, for example. The film’s story — about a major crime family unfolds over a ten-year period starting in 1945.

While Chinatown is a perfect mystery that delivers a socially conscious and powerful punch, The Godfather is delivered on a larger and richer canvas. Settle in for a classic double feature.

To accompany the long evening   (Chinatown runs more than two hours while The Godfather is nearly three), I’d suggest having a Tom Collins with Chinatown in honor of Faye Dunaway’s character.  Sip the cocktail slowly and then open a bottle of Nero D’Avola, a dry Sicilian wine, for The Godfather. Non-imbibers could do the Virgin Tom Collins, that is make the cocktail, but forget the gin.

Film Pairings — Two Films From The Seventies, Escape American vs. European Style

I can’t think of two more diverse approaches to film than these two 1970s crime films. One is American (U.S.) and the other European. If one needed an explanation of the difference in our cultures, this double feature should do the trick. 

Steve McQueen and Ali MacGraw

The Get Away (1972) is about as American as a movie can get.  Sam Peckinpah directed.  Arthur Hill wrote the screen play based on a Jim Thompson novel.  There are are guns — lots of guns — car chases, crashes, fires, explosions, falling elevators, even a potential hydraulic compaction in the back of a trash truck. McQueen is an ex-con who, in his exchange for what he imagines to be his freedom, trades his girlfriend and agrees to do a bank heist.  We go from bad to worse.  No end to treachery.  Along the way, the Thompson noir got a Hollywood detour.  Quincy Jones provided some happy ending music.  Even so, the movie was a big hit, and despite its ‘70s sentiment, Getaway is nonetheless an adventure. You won’t doze off.  The casting director deserves an award.  Ali MacGraw costars with merit, and supporting actor Al Lettieri is appropriately and masterfully despicable. Sally Struthers is at her irritating best.

Maria Schneider and Jack Nicholson

The theme of the evening is “escape,” from what to what.  In The Passenger we find Jack Nicholson playing British-born American TV journalist David Locke who is fed up with his wife, his life, and his job, which has devolved into a shallow practice of a once important profession.  At a remote hotel in Chad, he discovers that a fellow Western traveller with whom he had befriended has died of natural causes. The dead man had few ties back in England. Locke figured that, given the circumstances and with a little tinkering, he could exchange identities.  It was Locke who would be dead, officially. And the Nicholson character would be reborn as Robertson, set free from his encumbrances. However, Robertson turns out to have been a munitions supplier in the Chad civil war.  The new Robertson comes into a large sum of money, but of course cannot deliver the goods.  In this European film, written in part and directed by Michelangelo Antonioni, the threats are more implicit than manifest.  The character’s philosophically existential dilemma is more important than his physical survival.

The Passenger (1975) is a slow, beautiful film. While Getaway is nearly all action, The Passenger slows so you can see the amazing stream of still photographs that make up the whole.  The life force in the film, however, comes from actress Maria Schneider, who plays a young and eccentric "passenger,",if only the main character would get it. She is a sprite who does her best to help a human (Nicholson) find what he is really searching for.

Oddly, at the end of Getaway, Steve McQueen tells Slim Pickens, “I hope you find what you’re lookin’ for.”  The thing is that the Slim Pickens’ character, hardly pivotal, was the only one (in both movies) not looking for anything and seems quite content.

The roughly four hours watching these two movies are spent in hot, dry and desolate places.  To help you endure your cinematic surroundings, put some ice into a glass with tequila or rum to stay cool.  Lemonade is nice too.

Film Pairing — Corrupt Cops and Self-Destruction

One of the standard noir plots and of crime fact and fiction in general is about cops becoming robbers.  I think that being a cop has to make even the noblest of people vulnerable to the hardening of the soul, to the bitterness that comes when the bad guys make out better than the good guys, when it seems that nothing you do seems to make any difference or when getting by with it looks easy.  And of course, not every soul is noble to begin with.

Two films, one heralded and showered with awards and the other nearly forgotten even before it was released are featured here.

The Departed, directed by Martin Scorsese, won four Oscars. Scorsese, himself, won an Oscar and a Golden Globe for best director. Released in 2006, the film was based in large part on a highly rated Hong Kong film called Infernal Affairs.  What we have is an active-duty cop on the take and another cop doing undercover in a Boston gang trying to ferret him out.  It’s a simple plot, but one with suspenseful twists and turns and a cast of Hollywood heavyweights.  Where else would you find Leonardo DiCaprio, Matt Damon, Jack Nicholson, Martin Sheen, Mark Wahlberg, Alec Baldwin and Vera Farmiga in the same film? And for good measure there is the inimitable Ray Winstone playing second in charge of the local Irish gang to Boston boss Nicholson, more than keeping up with the scenery-chewing icon.  Lots of testosterone.  It oozes from the screen.

In The Departed the story is about finding the bad cop.  In Rampart, the story is about a police department that doesn’t want the cop found.  They are already sinking in a sea of bad PR from the bigger corruption — Rampart, a real LAPD scandal of immense proportions.  They don’t want the story of this bad seed and his highly personal brand of corruption to the mess. What we get from Rampart, released only last year, is a lesser phenomenon, but not a lesser film. The corruption of the cop in The Departed is a fait accompli pretty much from the beginning of the film.  In Rampart the focus of the film is on one cop, who despite the larger scandal going on around him, finds ways to be corrupt all on his own. He is a guy who wants what he wants and takes it — a man without allegiance. The world exists for him alone. It is perhaps a little less exciting than The Departed, but we delve into character a bit deeper — or try to. 

In a screenplay co-written by the famous crime writer, James Ellroy, we watch Woody Harrelson’s cop character devolve from a nasty human being to an even nastier one.  While the cast is not the powerhouse of The Departed, we are treated to fine performances from Ned Beatty, Sigourney Weaver, Anne Heche, and Ice Cube, with a cameo by Steve Buscemi.

If you get thirsty or want to feel part of the gang, you might open a bottle of Irish whiskey. If you want to change for the second feature, you could go for beer. Domestic is fine.